Two creams. No sugar.

That wiped the smile off his face. North found the bathroom. Toothpaste smeared a crescent smile along the mirror, and the sink looked like it was beyond cleaning—it was entombed in calcified spit and petrified dental floss and long, shiny reddish-brown strands of hair. North jiggled the medicine cabinet open, keeping the remaining hinge on the broken door from creaking, and found the bottle of Miralax and measured out a triple dose into the cap and carried it downstairs. He mixed it into the coffee. He even found a saucer. And he carried it into the office.

Shaw was sitting behind his desk, a tower of books threatening to collapse on him at any moment. He rested his chin on both hands, watching Fennmore, who was crying softly.

“Two creams. No sugar.”

Fennmore accepted the coffee, sipped at it, and set it aside. “Oh, I don’t like hazelnut.”

“You don’t like hazelnut.”

“That’s ok,” Shaw said, shooting out of his seat. “Mr. Fennmore—”

“Matty,” the boy whispered.

“Matty, this is Mr. McKinney. North McKinney. He’s the founder of Borealis Investigations. We’re both going to be working on this case. And he was just being nice—” Shaw actually stuttered through this part, those hazel eyes shooting toward North, and North smiled and gave him a double thumbs-up. “Getting you that coffee, he was just being nice. He’s not a secretary.”

Another thumbs-up. After all, it wasn’t Shaw’s fault this kid was an entitled asshole.

“I thought this was your business.” Matty drew a nail around the saucer’s rim. “Your name is on the website. On the door.”

“That’s . . . complicated. Just trust me: we’re both going to be working your case, and you’re lucky to have North. He’s the best. The best in the whole business.”

Shaw’s eyes were begging North not to eat the kid for breakfast.

North ignored Shaw for a moment. Shaw was like that; always picking up strays. North was trying to reserve judgment on the kid—Oh, I don’t like hazelnut—and he wanted another look. With another quick look at Matty, North crossed to his own desk. The desk had been shunted off into a corner; it might as well have been covered in a drop cloth like some ancient, forgotten Victorian piece. But North wheeled the chair to make the third point of a triangle between Matty and Shaw, and he reassessed Matty Fennmore. The unruly wave of blond hair. The amethyst eyes. The dirt on his jaw, under his eyes, on his hands.

“Mr. Fennmore—” North began.

“Matty, please. I just want you to call me Matty.”

“He was just about to tell me how I can help him,” Shaw said.

North shifted his attention to Shaw, trying to gauge how hard his partner had already fallen. It was bad. Shaw’s refined features—the thin brows, the slender nose, the cheekbones and jaw that, in bad light, bordered on foxish—were already open in sympathy. The hazel eyes already had slightly red rims. The boy hadn’t even said anything yet—Two creams, please—he’d just cried, and Shaw was just about to cry alongside him. That was bad enough.